1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the general field of Internet based video.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a growing amount of video content has been added to the web (Internet). In addition to quantity, as available Internet bandwidth has increased, computer processing power improved, and storage capacity has grown, the quality of the video content has also improved. For example, in addition to lower quality compressed video, high definition video is now routinely available on many websites.
In addition to technical improvements, video production values have also improved. Although originally much Internet video was produced by amateurs, increasingly professionally produced videos made according to high production standards are also appearing on the web. This includes various news and entertainment oriented websites, such as cnn.com, and espn.com.
As a result, although web based video was originally intended as a low resolution media for small computer screens, increasingly internet video is now produced in formats that are suitable for large high quality video screens, such as the large (e.g. 22 inch or greater) video screens commonly used in living rooms, bed rooms, and business conference rooms.
At the same time however, web based video is often presented in the context of a web page, embedded along with text and various other images. Thus often a web page, for example, will have many lines or columns of text, various static images or drawings, and often a frame or region in which the video may be viewed (usually with an embedded video media player) within the context of the overall web page graphical layout.
For a user it is often both more personal and convenient to first browse the web pages on a smaller computerized device and then, only when watching or sharing the video, have the video portion of the web content projected or mirrored onto a larger video screen or television (TV). This is because TV, which is typically a shared viewing medium, located at least several feet away from the viewer, is generally less suitable for browsing.
Prior methods typically promoted browsing as well viewing on the same screen (one screen). For example, a user browsing as well as viewing video on a desktop, notebook or another hand-held device, or a user browsing and viewing video on a TV (e.g. WebTV, Google TV etc).
More recently there have been some methods proposed that compress the frame buffer display of the video portion of a computerized device (often a handheld computerized device or notebook computer) internally, and then send the compressed frame buffer data to out TV using a wireless protocol, where the compressed frame buffer data is then decompressed and displayed to television. This solution can also be used to enable a dual screen paradigm for consuming web content, where the web text is read on a smaller device close to the viewer and the web video, typically along with the rest of the content of the web page, can be done on a larger and more distant TV or other video monitor. One example of such technology is Wireless Display (WiDi) technology from Intel Corporation.
One drawback of this type of technology, however is that it requires the hand-held client device or a note book computer device to include this new and non-standard frame buffer compression technology, which presents critical cost and business challenges. In particular, because this capability often requires new and non-standard circuitry, it generally cannot be supported on existing (legacy) systems. Additionally, since these compression methods generally require both specialized computationally intensive processing, these methods are generally not suitable for present day low power hand-held devices. These methods also generally require an adaptor on the TV side to convert the compressed WiDi data to a video (e.g. HDMI) signal format suitable for output for standard television devices.
In addition to the WiDi methods discussed above, there have been other proposed methods that, instead of compressing the video frame buffer of a hand-held or note book device internally (inside the device), take a display port or VGA output of the device, compress it and then transmit the output an HDMI adaptor (typically a wireless adaptor) connected to the TV. This solution also presents cost and business challenges because it also requires additional circuitry. These methods generally require the hand-held device both offer the display output through an external connector and additionally requires an external HDMI adaptor connected to the TV, and this additional circuitry adds extra cost.
Remote Control Methods
Typically users displaying video on large screens, again such as living room, bed room, and business conference room screens, have a desire to control the video viewing experience using various remote control methods.
One common option is to use standard infrared remote controls, which are typically handheld controllers with multiple control buttons (e.g. channel selection, volume control, input selection, video adjustment, and so on) that are commonly present in almost all households. Such controllers originated in a pre-web era, however, when users were not expected to easily input more complex data, such as web page uniform resource locators (URL) data, and are often not well suited for the more demanding job of managing the remote presentation of web page embedded video.
However, as small handheld devices such as WiFi capable smart phones have proliferated, exemplified by the popular iPhone and Android series of phones, and also including WiFi capable non-cell phone devices such as the Apple iPod touch and iPad, the desirability of using these small handheld devices as WiFi (or infrared) based remote control devices has become apparent. These smart phones and related devices typically have at least one computer processor (often of limited computing capability due to battery power constraints), a small video display, and either a touch sensitive screen based user interface, and/or a button based user interface. These more sophisticated types of interfaces allow users to enter in more complex commands, such as web page URL data, using real or virtual (e.g. software rendered on a touch sensitive screen) keypads.
For example, various applications (app) programs exist for the Apple iPhone, iPad, or iPod, such as the iTunes remote application, that allow users to control the playback of video on large screen TVs using dedicated Internet video systems such as Apple TV. However these systems generally rely upon specialized web content, such as Apple iTunes, that have been customized for this type of system, and thus these systems are often not well suited for typical web pages.
In the case of a typical web page with mixed text, images, and embedded video, the problems of using a small handheld device to remotely control the web page and control the playback of selected regions of the web page that have embedded video should be appreciated. A typical web page, with all of its associated text and graphics, will generally render too small an image on the handheld remote control, thus requiring much zooming and resizing in order to find the right section of embedded video and the associated remote controls, as well as much expenditure of limited onboard processing power and bandwidth to do this zooming. At the same time, the web page, if literally reflected onto the large and more distant video screen (for example, a Television—TV), is generally harder to read from a distance, and is also more difficult to manage.